People often ask me why I decided to go the self-publishing route with Eureka Street Press – and now to continue along that path with my second novel (“The Forest Dark“). Here are the reasons. (If you have any questions, I’d love to respond to them – just put them in the comments.)

So, why Self-Publish? Here’s what happened with “Benediction” (2009):

• Initially, I went the traditional approach looking for a book agent, specifically, one who had supported Gay Fiction in the past (this was for my first novel, Benediction)
• I sent out 30 or so letters to agents and got back respectful rejections from all (all that I heard back from, which was most of them, if not all)
• I also realized that the question of how to market this book (about a middle-aged gay man with prostate cancer) was equivalent to the question of the quality of the book itself – which struck a chord with me, as it was similar to my work experience in the entertainment industry, i.e., the questions we asked about film and TV projects, regardless of subjective “merit.”
• It’s all about genre: to successfully market a book, you have to choose a genre. Even though I always felt the book (Benediction) had wide appeal, I chose to brand it Gay Fiction.
• About the same time, I spoke with an acquaintance who had a good experience with self-publishing (Drew Banks, Able Was I) and took a seminar at the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center on Self-Publishing (given by bestselling writer Nick Nolan).

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• I took the class, and his ideas really seemed to make tremendous sense, particularly from a niche marketing model
• I’m also a big fan of Chris Anderson’s book The Long Tail, and realized how the internet has basically changed the way we find out about and buy media (among other things), but especially music and books.
• I had done this before – with a short documentary video, which is for sale VOD (video on demand) on amazon.com and has been for years. (Our Brothers, Our Sons, which was also an independently produced project from start to finish.)
• My old day jobs (remember them?) have mostly been in marketing/PR, so doing that aspect of this process (and it is a significant part of the process) was not daunting to me.

The Basic Process

• I chose a publishing company (originally BookSurge, now they’re CreateSpace), which is owned by amazon.com, and intimately connected to all the marketing strength of amazon. (This is also the company that distributes my video.)
• I hired a copyeditor and a separate graphic designer for the cover.
• I submitted text files once the book was edited, and then proofread, made changes, then approved galleys.
• Once that was done, the title was ready to be printed P.O.D. (print on demand) model, i.e., there is no inventory, when a book is ordered, they print one, which makes this business model doable. It was also formatted to Kindle ebook, which have turned out to been the lion’s share of sales.

The Marketing Part

• Challenge – you do have to find your audience, which is mainly people who not only buy their books online, but also find out about their books on the internet.
• I committed to spending about an hour a day for a year (at least, gulp) doing marketing on this book, mostly online.

After the launch, then what?

Pitfalls

• Growing an online fan base is really slow – hopefully, these books will pay for themselves eventually, but there’s no guarantee.
• You have to do all the marketing yourself – or pay someone to do it for you.
• The whole issue of “returnable books” makes the economics of selling self-published or P.O.D. books in brick-and-mortar bookstores really difficult – so you do miss that audience, or they are harder to reach. (You tell people about it, but they don’t see it in bookstores, so out of sight, out of mind…)
• There is still some prejudice against self-published books as being of inferior quality, though that is rapidly changing year over year.
• My hunch is that self-publishing is best for books that have a real clear niche to them – probably the best for non-fiction (like a self-help or a finance book, for example), followed by really definable genre fiction books – such as mystery, romance, etc. It’s much harder with literary fiction unless there’s a great marketing hook or you’re already a well known writer with a platform (a blog, a following on Facebook, a YouTube sensation, an email list of thousands, etc.)

Benefits

• Online royalty structure is outstanding – up to about 35% of list price for paperbacks, 70% of list price for ebooks.
• The book will never go out of print, unless I take it out of print.
• Control, control, control! As the author, I have total control over this book and what happens to it – and with CreateSpace, it’s a non-exclusive arrangement, so I can pursue other sales channels (for instance, with Barnes & Noble, Apple, etc.) as well. (And I admit it, I’m pretty much a control freak.)
• No need to share the royalties with an agent.
• Timing – you can have a book out in the marketplace in a couple of months – vs. a year to 18 months or more with a traditional publishing deal.
• A successful self-published book is also a frequent launching pad to a traditional publishing contract, should you want that. (Amazon Encore for successful self-published books, others.)

But don’t just take my word for it! Here are Guy Kawasaki’s Top Ten Reasons to Self-Publish (from his 2013 book, How to Publish a Book):

1. Content and design control. Self-publishers can control what’s in a book, how long it is, and how it looks. They only answer to themselves for most aspects of their books.
2. Time to market. Self-publishers can get their book to market in less than a week once it’s copyedited. Traditional publishers take six to nine months to get a printed book to market, and they will not release the ebook version earlier than the printed version.
3. Longevity. Self-publishers can keep their book in print forever—or at least as long as it takes for readers to discover it. Traditional publishers stop marketing a book once sales decline.
4. Revisions. Self-publishers can revise books immediately with online ebook resellers and printers that are working “on demand.” Traditional publishers can take months to fix errors because they print revisions after they’ve sold off current inventory.
5. Higher royalty. Self-publishers can make more money. Amazon pays a 35 percent or 70 percent royalty to ebook self-publishers. On a $2.99 ebook, most authors make approximately $2.00.
6. Price control. Self-publishers can change the price of their book at will. For example, they can set a lower price to try to sell more copies or set a higher price to communicate higher quality.
7. Global distribution. Self-publishers can achieve global distribution of their ebook on day one. For example, Kindle Direct Publishing will list an ebook in one hundred countries. Apple’s iBookstore reaches fifty countries.
8. Control of foreign rights. Self-publishers determine who buys foreign rights and for how much. They can make more money because they are not sharing foreign-rights revenues with a traditional publisher.
9. Analytics. Self-publishers can receive real-time or near real-time sales results. Traditional publishers provide twice-a-year royalty statements—imagine running a business with two sales reports a year.
10. Deal flexibility. Self-publishers can cut any kind of deal with any kind of organization. Traditional publishers only sell to resellers except for bulk sales of printed books to large organizations.